[Moonstone]

We are older, almost retired, reunited after forty years apart because of his (successful) cancer treatment. I love him so much that I that didn't scare me away. But my loose flesh from gastric bypass surgery has off-put him, he says. (And I thought he'd love the new skinny me!) For two blessed years, I've empathized with his claim that he is impotent... to the point that he doesn't make love, let alone allow me to touch him nor touch me. And I am a red-blooded woman who is not a cheater. He is unsentimentasl, no Valentines etc. Part of the reason for my patience is that he is being treated for depression and making the switch to sober life. (As well, I am treate for a mood disorder.) Yesterday morning, I heard him masturbating to climax in the shower. When I told him I'd heard, he was irrate and accused me of invading his privacy, that I'd opened the door, something I would never do. I said, "Don't flatter youself, and if I did, I come in and help you!) Now he says that he will lock the bathroom door from now on! (Actually, I think his claim clouds the issue of secrecy and a locked, selfish heart.) We are back to not speaking and avoiding one another. I am retired, use to being happy, active and alive with many friends and family until I moved to his town of 1000 to endure this treatment. After two years of this, despite counsielling, I'm so depressed, I spend my days watching TV on the couch, reading, ing an moaning, being a maid and pet-sitter ina loveless life while he isolates in his study as soon as he get home from work. Other people love him despite his anti-social nature, but I just can't stand his hypocracy, tyranny, and cruelty to deny me sexual satisfaction and the feeling of being lovable. He is a professor who goes out of his way to counsel the coeds at his private college. That makes for lots of nice fantasies with wich I can't compete. He will not communicate, except to brow-beast me. Yet he expects me to go to teas and banquets and appear as the "professors (unofficial) wife." Could he be in love with a former-coworker, several former student, and/or be gay? (He claims that he feels morally it is perfectly okay to date alumni and sponsores the gay-rights club on campus.) I got the courage to call his ex-wife before I came here. He told me her claim of affairs was untrue but was confirmed by a mutal friend. He's always home on-time but goes to music and theatre practices on campus almost every night, including Sunday. He has multiple email accounts and is careful not to leave anything about, so I question if I am delusional. Perhaps staying is the great delusion, but I'm trapped here on the brink of bankruptcy, far from friends and home. My medical bills are mounting from this anguish. There seems no way out.

[talaniman]

And you stay to be miserable because you're broke? You will feel better if you leave, and go back to what you did before. Broke or not.

[Fr_Chuck]

There are perhaps reasons you did not stay with him 40 years ago, and perhaps reasons he is alone now.

I will agree, why did you ever get with him to start with ? And why have you stayed.

So you stop paying medical bills and move back to friends and families.